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Sending Spin Waves into an Insulating 2D Magnet

Researchers excited and detected spin waves in a quantum Hall ferromagnet, spending them through the insulating material like waves in a pond. (Image courtesy of Second Bay Studios/Harvard SEAS)

Quantum Hall ferromagnets are among the purest magnets in the world — and one of the most difficult to study. These 2D magnets can only be made in temperatures less than a degree above absolute zero and in high magnetic fields, about the scale of an MRI.

But quantum Hall ferromagnets could potentially do some really cool stuff, such as host spin superfluity, which, like superconductivity, allows signals to be sent with no energy loss.